Articles | Volume 8, issue 9
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3617-2015
https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-8-3617-2015
Research article
 | 
08 Sep 2015
Research article |  | 08 Sep 2015

Mapping spectroscopic uncertainties into prospective methane retrieval errors from Sentinel-5 and its precursor

R. Checa-Garcia, J. Landgraf, A. Galli, F. Hase, V. A. Velazco, H. Tran, V. Boudon, F. Alkemade, and A. Butz

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Short summary
The future satellite missions Sentinel-5 and its precursor will monitor methane column average dry air mole fractions. The ambitious accuracy required on regional scales demands a characterization of the systematic error sources in which spectroscopic uncertainties are crucial. This study investigates how methane and water vapour spectroscopic errors propagate into retrieval errors, showing that spectroscopy-induced errors exceed 0.6% in large parts of the world and are regionally correlated.